A Cottage by the Sea - On My Mind

Elizabeth Gilbert and radical compassion

1/25/2020

Yesterday as I started listening to Tara Brach’s interview with Elizabeth Gilbert on Day 5 of the Radical-Compassion Challenge, I thought to myself; you don’t need this, you don’t need this ‘crazy’ tale. But I continued and am very grateful that I did. My personal world doesn’t include stories or people that Gilbert tells about, and yet the human desire for love is there in everyone. Hearing about the suffering of others helps me be compassionate towards others and honest with myself.
      Here are a few of my personal take away from the interview.
   This deep longing, which Gilbert names as love, is within everyone. I have a church and faith tradition that keeps me tapped into the love, but that not the only way for people. I had a mom who opened up that love inside me and nurtured it within me during her long life and continues to be there for me. Mothers may not be ‘the one’ for everyone, but I believe there is a special someone who offers that love to every human being.
    Sometimes we can’t help people in their struggles, but we can love them. What a relief. We can’t fix people but we can love them while they are doing their own repair work.
   I believe that life is good even in the midst of pain. I have to take time to pray/meditate/sit in the silence to tap into that love that is within me.

https://www.tarabrach.com/calendar/radical-compassion-challenge-free-10-day-online-event/

Radical-compassion challenge

1/21/2020

The Radical Compassion Challenge, led by Tara Brach. I’m giving it a try. Check it out. It’s free. Daily guided meditations; interviews with leaders in the field, challenges to try.
    Why did I sign up? After all I’ve tried on-line courses before and never completed one of them. So why this one?
    On the practical level, it’s free and I’ve agreed to be compassion buddies with two friends who have joined the challenge.
    On a personal level, I need help. I know that guided meditation will help me with my paltry meditation practice.
    On a soulful level, I need help. I know that the compassion I feel for others is more in my head than in my heart, where I want it to be.
     I’m not going to summarize the teachings and learnings from each session. Sign up if you want those details. I will, however, give you a few nuggets. Here’s today’s. Nothing new, other than refreshed awareness.
     Take three deep breaths when you find yourself becoming upset about or preoccupied with something.

https://www.tarabrach.com/calendar/radical-compassion-challenge-free-10-day-online-event/

Thinking about thinking

1/11/2020

I’ve been thinking about thinking, and think it ought to stop. No question, too much thinking is going on with me, and for that matter, everyone I know. The issue is that it is not new thinking but repeat thinking, going over and over the same issues again and again (notice how I repeated those words). I know better because I know that letting go of thinking is key to silence, solitude, and simplicity, and thus to peace and love, which is what I long for. Be in the NOW, meditate, return to the breath; answers will come, not in words but Being.
This morning, as I read what Emmet Fox wrote about thinking, I began to question (think) whether my thinking consciously leads me to soulful decisions.

You think, and your thoughts materialize as experience; and thus it is, all unknown to yourself as a rule, that you are actually weaving the pattern of your own destiny, here and now, by the way in which you allow yourself to think, day by day and all day long.
I sure isn’t easy to stop thinking. Don’t think about meditating, just do it.

Top Twelve Read of 2019

1/2/2020

Here it is, my Top Twelve Reads of 2019: ten fiction, two autobiography, zero nonfiction. I figure I receive enough non-fiction through the daily news. Maybe there will be a year when that won’t be so. As far as the 2019 Goodreads Reading Challenge, my goal was 80, actual reads was 57 (watched the news too much) . I’m going for 80 again; might as well act my age.

Chevalier, Traci. A Single Thread
Fay, Juliette. The Shortest Way Home
Lawson, Mary. Road Ends
Mitchell, Stephen. Joseph and the Way of Forgiveness
Norman, Howard. The Bird Artist
Obama, Michele. Becoming
Owens, Delia. Where the Crawdads Sing
Pace, Kristin Knight. This Much Country
Pagels, Elaine. Why Religion? A Personal Story
Riley, Rhonda. The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope
Strout, Elizabeth. Olive, Again
Wall, Cara. The Dearly Beloved

December 31, 2019

12/31/2019

Today, New Year’s Eve, is a pivotal day for me: the first day being 80 years old, the last day before a new decade. It is also a cottage day, that is until this evening when we go to friends for early supper.
It’s been many years since I’ve forced myself to stay up to watch the Time Square ball drop, and I have no intention of doing so tonight. Twenty years ago I watched the new millennium make its grand entrance around the world, clearly a once in a lifetime happening.

Great weather all week

12/21/2019

The forecast for the the week and into the weekend is made for holiday (and birthday) travel. Temperature in the high 30s, and a combo of sun and clouds. Very grateful.

Don't worry about the weather

12/20/2019

It's going to be a beautiful day.

I live more in the future than in the past; I don’t worry about what’s going to happen. For the most part, I ‘know’ everything is going to be okay, actually more than okay. I’m an optimist, which is a definitely plus to living in the present moment.
However, I am currently facing a challenge to stay in the NOW, working hard not to obsess about the weather, specifically next weekend when family is gathering to help me celebrate my 80th birthday at the Wayside Inn. What Jim and I can’t get home from Lancaster, PA? What if family can’t make it from Connecticut, Vermont, or even venues in Massachusetts?
Let it go, I tell myself. You’ve done this before, and it all worked out. I don’t recall even thinking about the possibility of a snowstorm when Jim and I got married December 28th back in 1963. Say in the NOW.

Another Cottage Day

12/16/2019

Another Cottage Day, another day writing at the library. I want to report that I’ve given myself high marks for staying away from the news. I didn’t listen all weekend, nor did I tune in this morning. I feel a shift back to purpose that I can control and meaning to which I can contribute.

Renewal at the library

12/14/2019

Today is a Cottage Day. I’m replicating as best I can those winter days at the cottage by the sea that I rented from 2009-2014. It’s not hard to begin if I do nothing more than keep the TV off. During those five seasons I only recall turning it on twice: once to watch President Obama accept the Nobel Peace Prize, and once to check the weather.
How easy it has been to be drawn into the impeachment drama. Addictions come in many forms; my absorption in news has taken me away my longing to live a life in solitude, silence and simplicity. This morning that longing returned and I found myself making a conscious commitment not to check in with the news today.
Instead, I walked across the street to the library and here I sit in a comfortable chair in the original octagonal building of 1863. No TV then or now.

Be hopeful, let go of frustration

12/11/2019

Hope

I’m feeling a little frustrated with my blog server. I add a picture, click ‘post’, and the wrong picture appears—a picture from a recent post, or from my other blog. Ah, you ask: you I have two blogs? Yes, this one, and www.aprayerdiary.net.
Enough about my frustration of misplace photos, enough negativity, enough of the blame game. Hopefully, my blogs are positive, one about silence, solitude, and simplicity, the other about my faith journey.
So, as you continue your day, which could be filled with frustration about the weather, the negative language by the president, blah blah blah, I hope you will stay positive and go out and do something for others, something that will bring peace to them and the world. AMEN